


staying power

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Male-Female Friendship, Older Man/Younger Woman, Pining, Quantum Mechanics, Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Sharing Clothes, Soulmates, Teasing, not a fitzsimmons friendly story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 10:35:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16262450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: For Cousyfixit prompt: ghost/afterlife.  Coulson appears on the ship as a ghost.





	staying power

He has been a ghost before.

So now that he's had yet another defining experience, he has to consider.

The absence of panic. Of really anything at all.

It's like he just arrived.

When this happened to him before, there was a sense of urgency. Desperation.

A chain of events that lead him to walk like a ghost.

This isn't like that at all.

Perhaps because he had worked up to the moment?

Put his things in order.

Let May finish what Fury had charged her with when she joined the team.

Made it back through death's door in the most humane way possible.

He had written a letter, trying to make her understand.

And yet, he's still here.

This definitely wasn't what he had expected.

His last memory before this moment, wasn't on this ship. It was on Earth.

A sunrise.

Is he here for a reason? Is he supposed to do something?

The hall of the ship is empty, and he's not alarmed, but there is a door in front of him.

He tries it, but of course he can't manage the handle.

So he walks through it instead.

There is no reason to shut his eyes of course, but he does until he's on the other side.

It's Daisy's bunk. She is sitting on her bed, holding a piece of paper in her hands.

It's the letter, and Daisy is crying.

"No, no, no," he says, moving toward her. Surprised at how quickly he feels again.

And she looks up for a moment, startles, and it makes him stop in his tracks.

She blinks and her expression tells him she is trying to work something out.

"You're not crazy," she whispers to herself out loud.

"You're not," he says to her. "We just ran out of time."

"And anyway, I object to stuff you put in this letter. I always knew it was hopeless. But I let it happen, anyway."

"Let what happen?" he asks, circling around her shoulder, to look down and make sure it's his letter they're talking about here."

It is his letter. It's the second page. Handwritten and everything.

"Okay, fine," she says aloud and then wipes at her nose with her sleeve. "Maybe it's better you'll never know."

It dawns on him then, that perhaps this is why he's here. It's because of Daisy, of course.

Daisy, whose hair is blonde now. She always did that when there was upheaval in her life. Pain.

He did this to her, and this is his punishment for it.

"I wanted to make it hurt less," he says to himself out loud. "I didn't want you to have to watch."

"It's just," she sniffs, and folds the letter up, then rolls her eyes to hold back tears.

"I wish it felt like you were really gone, instead of that I just couldn't hold on."

It makes him break inside, right where his heart should be, watching her put her head in her hands.

Her shoulders shake.

"I'm sorry."

  
###

  
Things have changed now that he's not here.

It's like Daisy is back to being a team of one again.

He reminds himself of why he made that series of choices. That he knew he had to die, so they could save the world.

To save Daisy, because she was the only one who could do it. Who could survive.

How could he know that? It's like he still knows that.

"It's the GH-325," he says, walking to the hangar beside her. "It has to be."

Daisy pauses and sighs, setting her jaw askew before continuing on.

"But I'm dead, I don't have the GH-325 in my blood anymore," he goes on, following after her.

It's dark in the hangar, and Daisy seems to be searching for something, holding her hand out of front of her.

"I knew it," she says, stopping, and squatting, taking out a pocket knife and wedging loose a panel.

She puts a small flashlight in her mouth, and once she's inside, she pulls out a small button shape, holds it between her fingers, then she vibrates it, crushing it.

"Spying on us," she talks out loud. "What do you have planned when we find you, Doctor Fitz?"

It makes a chill run down Coulson's spine, which seems somehow ironic.

Then she stands and repeats the gesture, her hand outstretched, turning around to face him.

"Who's there?!" she asks loudly, and takes a fighting stance.

He turns around at first to look behind him.

There's no one there, so he turns back to her, when he feels it, his form vibrating, as it starts to dissipate.

"Stop!" he yells out, nonsensically, but he's not ready to go, it turns out.

"What?" she asks, her voice wavering, dropping her hand. "I'm, I'm not losing it. Please. Just tell me-"

"Daisy?" he reaches out to her this time, with his voice. With the faintest idea of hope.

"Yes!" she answers back quickly, and lowers her hand.

"You can hear me," he says in rush. "And you thought it was something you'd imagined."

She nods, silent, and lifts her hand again, then balls it into a fist. "Did I hurt you?"

"It was having an effect on me," he tells her. "Whatever me exactly is right now."

"I could sense you," she tells him, opening her hand again. "Come closer."

He does, and then he feels something gentle, more like a caress and-

"Uh, don't worry about breaking me, all things considered," he blurts out.

"I'm still trying to convince myself you're there."

"I'm here."

  
###

  
Now it's more work since they're so aware of each other.

He has to be mindful of interrupting her or distracting her.

He was trying to keep a level head when she went off on a mission on her own.

Not that she was wrong to do it, but because the traps were particularly dangerous, and he could do nothing.

"He cut you open, you can't assume his intentions towards you are entirely rational," he tells her in the lab.

"Oh, he's very rational," she reminds him, as Simmons gives her the eye from where she is standing.

"Daisy, if you're going to talk to yourself," she reminds her. "Please-"

"Yeah I know. Not in the lab," she says with a thin smile, and places the black box on her workstation.

"I'm having a hard time getting inside. Needs a bio specialist's touch, I think."

Simmons sighs and puts down the bio samples she has from their last stop. "It's perfectly treatable, Daisy."

"You're not even curious what might be inside?" she asks.

"More curious about why you went off on your own," the other woman answers.

"You should tell her, Daisy," he says. "Get her ready for what she's going to find."

"What good will it do? You won't believe me anyway."

It makes him nervous about where this is headed, and Daisy will be determined to see it through.

Simmons' blank expression tells him that Daisy is in for an uphill battle.

Once she gets on the trail of something like this, she'll connect all the dots.

He watches her casually lean and get a look at the data that Simmons is working on.

"I love watching you do that," he says wistfully. "I've missed it."

"Whelp, gotta go."

"I could help," he tells her, as they round the corner. "I can....spy. I mean, in the friendly sort of way."

"You would do that?" she asks him, opening the door to her bunk and tossing her bag on the bed.

"Yes, I would uh, um-" He pauses and turns around when she starts changing. "Observe-"

"Observe," she repeats after him, and he puts his hands on his hips, looks up towards the ceiling. "In a friendly way?"

He sees her walk by him wearing an oversize dress shirt like it's a nightgown, as she takes out her laptop and opens it.

"Is that mine?" he asks her, following her towards the bed.

"Yeah, I took it out of your things after you died," she tells him, lifting the collar up to smell it. "It still smells like you."

He stares at her for a long time, stretched out across the bed, watching the security footage she stole. Contemplating.

"Uh. What do I smell like?" he finally asks.

She drops a shoulder, to turn a flat stare in his general direction, and the shirt starts to slip down it.

"Really?"

  
###

 

"I can't let you go alone. Not this time."

"What are you going to do, tell on me?"

Now he is panicking. Because he knows if she steps off this ship, he might never see her again.

"Take me with you," he pleads.

"Coulson, if you leave this ship, if something happens and you end up floating in endless space, I'll-"

"You'll find me, and bring me back. Like you already did."

"Don't say that," she tells him, shaking her head. "I can't make you just- I didn't bring you-"

"There was something you wanted to tell me, wasn't there?" she is staring right at him. It's uncanny.

"I'm not doing this right now," she tells him, trying to duck past him. "Don't make me walk through you."

"Can you see me?" he asks her.

"If I want to, I can see you."

He stretches his arm out until it crosses the door, blocking her path with certainty.

He can't even see himself. And when did this start?

"Sort of a critical piece of information to omit, don't you think?"

Now she averts her eyes, blowing out a puff of breath and looking away.

"How often do you see me?" he asks her, narrowing his eyes.

"Lately, a lot," she tells him in a low voice, her eyes getting bigger. "It's just-"

"What?" he asks her impatiently, shifting against the doorframe.

"It's just, there's a lot of you to see," she says to him, lowering her tone again.

It's just a bit of a shock, but now that she mentions it, he does often feel drafty.

"Oh," he manages. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to be-"

"I tried imagining you in a suit, to see if I maybe had some influence on it."

"Any luck?" he asks with his eyebrows raised to his forehead.

"Nope."

"Then you should definitely take me with you," he tells her. "I can get into places you can't."

"It's...distracting, to say the least."

"I'm going to pretend that's meant as a compliment," he tells her, frowning, as she bites on her bottom lip.

"You could try imagining yourself in a suit," she suggests helpfully, her eyes threatening to wander.

"Take me with you," he repeats with a smirk.

 

###

  
Daisy is injured, and they are not on the ship.

They are somewhere strange, in a medical testing facility, one belonging to the Doctor, to be sure.

Abandoned, on his travels as he gets ready for whatever future he has planned for.

Why didn't he put the pieces of this together before he ran off and died?

He reaches for the box of medical supplies and his hand goes right through it.

"Dammit!"

Daisy groans and helps herself onto the table and then lays out on it, holding onto her arm.

"Hey, maybe I'll join you on the other side," she says with a brave smile and closes her eyes.

"Don't joke about that," he tells her, his mind racing. "Your powers, what if they did something to me?"

She tries to raise up on one elbow and then slips back down to the table.

"I think I'm pretty sure what my powers do to you."

He's can feel himself blush, or maybe it's just the memory of it.

"It's not like that," he tells her, then hears her low chuckle. "Okay, it's a little like that," he admits.

Looking down at her, he smiles, trying to catch her eyes even though she looks pale and weak.

"I just didn't see it before," he tells her. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It wasn't what you wanted," she tells him, her eyes getting a little wet. "If you had never met me-"

"I would've been killed by Ward, and then I couldn't be here with you right now."

She lets go of her arm with her hand, and reaches out to his wrist, and he feels a pulse there, as she weakens.

He already knows, and he reaches for the box of medical supplies again, as she passes out on the table.

However much time he has like this, whatever incredible things she is able to do, it's a gift.

His training all kicks in and he's able to dress the wound from the trap, and sew up her shoulder.

Carefully, so the scar will be as small as possible.

He looks at his hand, and arm, sort of floating in the air in front of him, disembodied.

Then he pushes a few damp strands of hair off her forehead, and looks around for something he can put under her head.

She stirs a little bit, uneasy by the crease between her eyebrows, that he tries to smooth away with his thumb.

"Stay with me," he says, leaning over her to quietly declare it.

Even as his hand stroking her hair starts to fade back to nothing.

It was like they were expected. As though someone knew they were coming.

He's more determined than ever to stay by her side.

  
###

  
She pulls off the sweater she's wearing, and he finds himself not looking away.

Talking to herself, or to them both, he watches her walk across the room and shake a small tin.

Then she pads back to the bed and sits on the edge, opening up the tin and trying to thread a needle.

"Let me do that for you," he tells her. "I'm good at it."

It's the first time that it's come up since that mission that went sideways, but she puts her things down and stands.

She comes closer to him, and then repeats the gesture, as before, touching his wrist, watching her draw her hand across it.

And it feels like a caress, it feels like-

"Don't stop," he says, when she stops at his elbow.

"Are you sure?" she asks him, raising an eyebrow, and searching his eyes for any doubt.

He nods his agreement and she moves closer to him, both her hands outstretched.

"Can you do it?" he asks her. "I mean, will you be okay-"

"I want to try," she tells him, and she starts again, her powers washing over him, as her hands move up his arms to his shoulders.

Her fingers draw over his face, and his mouth falls open, his breathing giving him away, and before he can manage a groan, her lips press into his.

He had taken so much for granted in his simple state. He uses hands to pulls her in closer to him, his tongue pressing into her mouth as she whimpers.

These were things he'd forgotten towards the end, when he decided to let go.

Lifting her, and feeling her thighs against the palms of his hands, as he moves them to her bed.

She shifts lower, tracing over his chest and his stomach, following her fingers with her mouth.

"Almost there," she tells him.

"You have no idea," he says, turning his head on the mattress to look at her kissing the inside of his thigh.

"Oh, Daisy."

His fingers twist in her hair, and he feels like he's being made and unmade at the same time, as her hand closes around his cock, just briefly, not enough.

And then fingers brushing along the hair on his legs, the tips of his toes.

She comes and flops down on the bed beside him.

"Was it good for you?" she asks, a little drowsily.

He dips his head into the crook of her neck, and plants kisses along her shoulder, working his way up as she sighs.

Kissing her again, he holds her face in his hands, then dots one on her chin, her nose, brushing the hair back from her face as it moves between his fingers.

They ran out of time before.

He slips a hand down between their bodies, and she presses her face against his neck and groans as he pushes her underwear away to slip his finger inside her.

Kissing her deeply.

As the clock counts down.

  
###

  
"Of course I figured out your connection," he tells both of them, monologuing.

"People don't just pull that kind of intel from thin air. Nothing on my security feeds," he goes on, putting his hands on his hips.

"Maybe I'm clairvoyant?" she tells him.

"Charming," he says with a tight smile. "Although, I'm beginning to think Coulson might have nine lives."

"What were you planning on doing about it?" Daisy asks defiantly.

"Phasing him into a dimension so far from here, you could never pull him back."

"No thanks, I'd like to remain phase free," Coulson shoots back at him from the chair where he's tied up.

"So, it is the GH-325," Daisy asks, because, why not keep him talking? It's one of his favorite things.

The more he talks, the less he fiddles with the alien device pointed at Couslon.

She's going to guess it's a phase weapon.

"No, it was the bloody serum you tried to save him with," the Doctor says. "Your mother's DNA is thousands of years old, with full regenerative capabilities."

She looks over at Coulson, a little surprised at this turn of events, but it explains why he never faded away again after that first night together.

"We ran several very thorough experiments if I recall correctly," Coulson says loudly.

"Yes, it took hours, but I would definitely consider it a very rewarding sciencing."

The Doctor must feel like he's losing his audience because he scoffs at their conversation.

"Don't forget to throw in your ability to manipulate vibrations at the quantum level."

"Oh, I didn't forget that," Coulson adds.

She just shrugs at him while Coulson tries not to smile.

"Do I have to explain everything to you?" he exclaims to them. "The GH-325. Quantum. Entanglement."

"Yes, Simmons did suggest that as well, but was it your idea, or hers?"

"It required verification yes. Study followed by experimentation. Attempting to replicate the process."

"Why don't you try to replicate this?" Daisy asks, raising her hand.


End file.
